Ensemble

La Guerres Violinsonaten gehören zu den ersten französischen Werken dieser Gattung. Sie zeigen Charakte­ristisches für den Sonatenstil der Komponistin: eine Vielzahl von Sätzen (bis zu 8 Sätze) unters...

Das Quartett Nr. 1 in Es-Dur zeigt, dass sie sich auch in Bezug auf die musikalische Qualität nicht hinter den frühen Werken dieser anerkannten Meister verstecken muss. Auch das zweite der sechs Quart...

When Dvořák suddenly became internationally famous in 1878 with his Slavonic Dances, he received, among other things, a request for a new string quartet from Jean Becker, the first violinist of the re...

In autumn 1895, after returning from New York once and for all, Dvorák took up his former position as teacher at the Prague Conservatory. This clearly had an inspiring impact on him because in the spa...

The Sextet in B-flat major was already judged to be 'one of the most beautiful works by this young composer' after its initial performances in early 1861. It was popular with both public and press, an...

Redolent of the work of Dmitri Shostakovich in its musical language, Evgeny Kissin's String Quartet op. 3 comprises four strongly contrasting movements: on the heels of the stately 'Adagio liberamente...

In 1919-20 George Gershwin was making a name for himself with Broadway songs and a first show of his own in New York. But he was already attracted to the world of classical music - a world he would en...

Dvorák composed his Terzetto op. 74 in 1887 as the result of a spontaneous desire to write some domestic music. Inspired by neighbourhood violin lessons, he wrote these four little movements for two v...

Alexander Zemlinsky's music was long unjustly overshadowed by what was regarded as the 'more progressive' Second Viennese School. Although Zemlinsky was close friends with its protagonist Arnold Schön...

Although Dvorak's stay in America (1892-95) was very successful, the composer suffered a good deal from homesickness. He had begun the string quartet in A flat major in New York, but continued with it...

Composed in autumn of 1881, Opus 61 is the last of Dvořák's 'middle' quartets by chronology for which Beethoven and Schubert served as the most significant models. Beethoven's influence, from thematic...

Béla Bartók's six string quartets, composed between 1908 and 1940, are 20th-century milestones of the genre. His First String Quartet is closely linked to his unhappy love for the violinist Stefi Geye...

Bartók's Second String Quartet was composed - with several long interruptions - between 1915 and 1918, after he had spent several years almost solely devoted to collecting folk music. The melody and r...

The String Quartet no. 3 is the shortest of Béla Bartók's six Quartets, and was also composed in a remarkably short time. He wrote the score in September 1927, and in the following December it won him...

Even before his String Quartet no. 3 appeared in print in 1929, Bartók was already working on a fourth in the summer of 1928. This five-movement work is arranged symmetrically around a highly expressi...

The longest and at the same time most complex of Bartók’s six string quartets was composed in the summer of 1934 as a well-paid commission for the renowned Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in Was...

Bartók began work on his Sixth String Quartet in the summer of 1939 as a guest of Paul Sacher in the idyllic Swiss mountain village of Saanen, before the impending outbreak of war drove him first to B...

In setting Richard Dehmel's poem 'Verklärte Nacht' (Transfigured Night) in his op. 4, the young Arnold Schönberg pursued the intention, as he himself said, of 'attempting those new forms in chamber mu...

The music world associates Verdi's name so obviously with his operatic output that his contributions to other genres can easily be overlooked. His only chamber work owes its existence to an enforced b...

The Weinzierl castle in Lower Austria, which still stands today, can be considered to be the birthplace of a chamber music genre, which is firmly established in our present-day repertoire. The young H...

Six works belong to opus 9 - the first group of Haydn's string quartets of which we know. The composer also went new ways as far as form was concerned: whereas he had still adhered to the five movemen...

The autograph score of the Quartets op. 17 was in the possession of the imperial police chief Johann Nepomuk Neuwirth, whose widow gave it to the Wiener Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1875. It is sa...

The volume opens with something unusual: opus 42 is a single work, short and surprisingly easy to play; Haydn described it as 'something small and with only 3 pieces'. The Quartets op. 50, including t...

The chamber music world has been eagerly awaiting this - all of Haydn's string quartets are finally available in Henle Urtext quality! The last edition to be finished contains the String Quartets op....

The quartets were dedicated to the violinist Johann Tost, who was the second principal violinist at the Esterházy court during the 1780s. His business sense led him to sell twelve quartets - opus 64 w...